Doing Everything Yourself Isn’t Dedication—It’s Bad Leadership

“We feel that we are the only ones who know exactly how to get things done. This is a telltale sign of bad leadership.” 

One of the most damaging perspectives you can have is believing there’s no one out there who can get the job done. We know that in early stages of your company with limited resources you will get frustrated because things are not getting done to your standards. Here are the negative implications of that mindset:

• You Stunt Growth. You become the bottleneck. It is impossible for a business to gain any momentum when everything waits for you. You see your passion, dedication and attention to detail as a huge plus. Others see it as detrimental to the growth of the business.
• Employees, Investors and Customers Question Your Leadership. When sophisticated individuals hear “I’m the only one that can do this,” they question your ability to lead the company. At early stages of the business, many people you are interacting with are putting you in one of two buckets:
  • Passionate entrepreneur that can’t ultimately lead the business.
  • Entrepreneur that understands how businesses grow.

When you say, “I’m the only one that can do these things,” people put you in the first category. It is not that they don’t appreciate your passion—it is one of the reasons they want to work with your company. However, these individuals are getting involved with your business because of the potential for growth. When they hear this perspective, investors think, “How are we going to get someone that can run the business going forward?” Employees think, “We won’t grow if he needs to have his hand in everything.” Customers will not see your passion. They will see you as a single point of failure: “What happens if he gets hit by a bus? Does that mean I am left out in the cold?”

• You Undermine Your Ability to Engage Employees. Senior employees will question whether your management style will give them the authority and accountability to execute, or will they be micromanaged instead. Senior employees don’t want to work in a company that looks like a “solar system”—where you are the sun and everything revolves around you. They want to join a team with a chain of command that allows them to naturally execute in their area of expertise.
• Your Productivity Suffers. Junior employees will become less productive as they wait for you to weigh in. When you do weigh in, you will likely change what has been done. While an edit may be in order, returning their work with 99 percent of the content in your pen, is discouraging and invalidates both the employee and the mentorship process. If you don’t allow them to make mistakes and learn, they will never grow and improve.
• Your Business Will Have Significant Risk. While early stage entrepreneurs are almost always indispensable, once you are fortunate enough to have customers, employees, and investors, you have to minimize this risk. What would happen to your employees if you got hit by a bus? What would happen to the money your family invested? What would happen to your investors? Would your customers continue to do business with your company? When everything revolves around you, you create risk for your constituents that they must weigh when doing business with your company. Would customers purchase an Apple product if they thought that when the world tragically lost Steve Jobs their products would no longer work?

When you do too much, you are setting your company up for failure.

How to Change Your Perspective

Here are things the things you can on a daily basis to change this perspective:

• Recognize That This Will Not Happen Unless You Drive It. You must make a concerted effort to manage your company to the point where others can do the jobs you need done. If you don’t make a commitment to this, everything will continue to be on your to-do list.
• Understand That Wanting Quality and Creating Scalability Can Coexist. Entrepreneurs invest so much in their venture and sometimes believe that no one else on the planet will nurture their baby like they will.
• Understand the Risks. Understanding the risks of this misaligned perspective should be enough to change your point of view. After all, if someone described a business strategy as “having the potential to stunt your business’s growth for years,” you would immediately change it. The same is true of this perspective.
• Accept The Fact That You’re Part of the Problem. You also have to accept the harsh reality that your own lack of managerial experience is a likely cause of this issue. Managers everywhere are tempted to dip their hands in every issue. It is not until they teach their teams to “fish” that they operate more efficiently. The same is true of the entrepreneur, but for some reason it seems almost to be a badge of honor—as opposed to a management flaw—for the leader to take on everything.
• Focusing on Non-Critical Items Demonstrates a Lack of Leadership. With the limited time and bandwidth most entrepreneurs have, it’s important to focus your attention on, and to preserve your energy for, priorities. When you allow yourself to spend time on non-critical items, you begin a domino effect that harms your entire organization. Imagine saying to your employees, “I can’t pay you anymore because I didn’t focus on financing for the last three months because I had to proofread the PowerPoint.”
• Be Clear about Expectations. Clearly communicate your expectations about substance, attention to detail and everything that is important to you.
• Teach. You know more than anyone about your business. Without imparting some of this knowledge to others, employees can’t take over functions. In no time, you’ve created the very situation that you are trying to avoid—you doing everything. When you teach, don’t do it five minutes before something is due or you will simply take on the task yourself. Schedule time each week that is dedicated to teaching. You are not “allowing” people to take on more, you are “enabling” them to do so.
• Have Employees Work as Teams. When two or more employees work together, they have the opportunity to not only improve each other’s work, but to learn more effectively. If your employees work as teams, you will have fewer individuals to train on distinct tasks and your mentorship will become more efficient.
• Expose Employees to Issues Outside Their Core Areas. Let employees sit in on meetings, conference calls and dialogues that expose them to the various issues of your company. This helps employees get a context for the different tasks and prerogatives of your company.
• Let People Make Mistakes. If you want things off your desk, you are going to have to accept some errors in the process. Let your team know that you expect this as part of the learning process.
• Be Honest about Your Own Ego. Ask yourself, do I really believe that I am the only one that can do this, or is that my ego talking? I am concerned that others might do it better? Am I concerned that I will lose control?

If you enable others to do more, the benefits will be exponential. More focus on the right things. More engaged employees. More people that can bring their ideas to the resolution of an issue. The ability to apply your talent to areas that need it. The ability to contribute your knowledge to an area without having to own everything. As we noted above, this does not happen on its own—you must drive it. As soon as you see some success in this area, you will think to yourself, “Letting go goes a long way.”